Today’s News Items

Americans United for Life reports on a positive development in Iowa, where the state Board of Medicine has resolved to stop the practice of “Skype abortions” and require physical examinations. (The measure the Board adopted still has to be reviewed by the General Assembly.)

Pro-life Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Butler recently went on the Today Show to discuss her infant daughter Abigail. Abigail was diagnosed in utero with Potter’s Syndrome, which is usually fatal. Some abortion supporters disgustingly took the news as an opportunity to attack Butler’s pro-life views. But Abigail sure showed them! A month after her birth, Abigail is doing great, thanks to an experimental treatment.

The Huffington Post has published two pro-abortion advocacy pieces recently, but they both came with useful infographics. Here’s one on health insurance coverage of abortion. And here’s one on the closure of abortion facilities since 2010. (AbortionDocs.org, which is pro-life, has more detailed information on abortion facility closures if you’re interested.)

In Want to Win a Political Debate? Try Making a Weaker Argument, social science analyst Eric Horowitz writes:

Because political beliefs are connected to deeply held values, information about politics can be very threatening to your self-image. . . . It follows that our openness to information depends on how it affects our self-worth, and a number of studies bear this out. One line of research has found that self-affirmation– a mental exercise that increases feelings of self-worth– makes people more willing to accept threatening information. The idea is that by raising or “affirming” your self-worth, you can then encounter things that lower your self-worth without a net decrease. The affirmation and the threat effectively cancel each other out, and a positive image is maintained. A 2006 study led by Geoff Cohen, for example, found that when pro-choice people had their partisan identities made salient, affirmation made them more likely to compromise and make concessions on abortion restrictions.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for pro-life advocates to time the release of information on prenatal development to when pro-choice listeners are in a state of high self-esteem. Ultrasound images are everywhere, and if a pro-choicer sees them while not feeling good about himself or herself, they may react by “intensify[ing] their incorrect beliefs.” It’s no wonder abortion is such a divisive issue!